But I don't care about the kind with racquets, either.

I don’t personally know anybody, setter or pointer, who gives much of a damn about pasture pool one way or another.

They could spice it up by incorporating some of my ideas:

Let golfers try to disrupt other golfers' swings by assaulting them with their clubs. Your caddy would be allowed to try to ward them off with your own clubs.

There should be a par time from tee to hole that requires at least a mild jog to avoid going over. You can attempt to trip other golfers along the way with your club.

The obstacles as they exist are too lame and easily avoided. I'm thinking a ditch and abatis clear across the fairway, and perhaps some barbed wire around the green. Rattlers would liven up the sand traps.

I once had a job that actually required me to play golf. Not kidding: Some of our biggest customers were golf fanatics, and everybody in management was expected to at least pretend to play.

The stupidity of this was palpable. If you want to make a committed golfer into a genuine enemy for life, assign yourself to his foursome when you don't know how to play.

Prior to that experience I never thought much about golf one way or the other. Since then, I've believed (and occasionally stated in management meetings) that the game could be measurably improved through the random use of land mines.

I'm surprised to hear so much anti-golf sentiment here. I used to love golf, but then my local course put a goddamned windmill right behind the clown's mouth, and my game went to hell. So I cut out the golf and took up drinking full time.

I don't know if they're still doing it, but there used to be a tournament near Kodiak, Alaska. It was one hole, par 72, straight up the side of a mountain. All you could have in your bag was a driver, a putter, and a machete.

At the risk of being banned forever from VFTP, I will describe a dream I had this morning which, by virtue of it being the last one I had before I awoke, was vividly remembered.

Cat curling.

It is exactly what you'd think it would be; however, I'm of two minds as to whether the cats should be loosed in carriers or just sent downrange "as-is."

I'm also torn as to whether the brushers should be allowed to shoo the cat along or whether it'd be funnier if they just had their normal job and the cats, once loosed, could go wherever Newtonian physics and their own cat minds propelled them.

My improvements to the game of golf include - absent an outright ban - two things:o Goal tenderso Midgets with cricket bats or fraternity paddles on the green.

So, would you also object to disc golf, which uses 'driver' and 'putter' variants of the old Frisbee (Boy, oh, boy, a Hasbro toy!), and played in parks, etc.

For either game, I think every foursome ought have one golden retriever, that must return at least three balls, not belonging to your party, before you are allowed to play the last hole.

Add two roving packs of mixed, feral Rottweilers, Pit Bulls, German Shepherds, and mixed terriers (well, maybe a vicious Airedale or Black Russian Terrier, if the particular animal were actually aggressive to all). Golfers would not be permitted to offer food or raise their voices to the dogs, and could not hit them with anything other than an article of clothing while being worn. ("I'll take you down, sit on you, and bounce," is a threat that comes to mind.)

Anybody remember the original Avengers series w/Patrick McNee and Diana Rigg? One episode featured golfers turning up dead on the course, with dimpled ball impressions in their foreheads. Turned out somebody was offing them with a (pneumatic, IIRC) golf ball gun. I've wanted one ever since.

Golf racing. Teams of three, Driver, fairway man, and putter. Each may only play the ball on his position, i.e., tee, fairway, and green.

Disruption of opponent's play allowable only by your own ball, that means no touching of opponent's person, ball, or club.

Helmets with full face mask only allowed protective gear.

An audible signal will start the race, with penalties for strokes being taken before the starter's howitzer.

There shall be no restrictions on sounds from the gallery; play will cease if spectators cause one bit of matter (including their bodies) onto the course, while stewards bind the offending spectator to a frame and administer five strokes with a horsewhip. This penalty is doubled for each subsequent infraction of the spectator's rules.

One more vote for ranges. I've never seen a fairway that wouldn't have been improved by the addition of excavation, rail tie walls and covered shooting benches & target stands in place of the tee boxes and greens...

A 20 handicap golfer walked into the pro shop one day and challenged the local pro to a $100 scratch round. But he insisted on getting two gotchas.

The pro accepted the bet and they headed out onto the course. As the pair walked off the 18 green the folks in the club house were shocked to see the pro handing over a hundred dollar bill to the hacker.

They asked the pro "What happened?" He replied I birdied the first hole while he doubled it. I was getting ready to tee off on the second hole and right in the middle of my backswing that bastard sneaks up behind me, reaches between my legs grabs my balls and yells "Gotcha!"

I shanked the shot into the lake. Then I spent the rest of the round waiting for him to take his second gotcha...

Since many of us want to rescue golf courses by turning them into rifle ranges, has anyone ever thought of rifle golf? Take an ordinary golf course and put clusters of 12, 9 and 6 inch round steel targets on it at more or less the same distances on each hole, approximating average tee shot and wedge distances. From the tee, pick the target you think you can hit (whatever rifle/sights or handgun you want, all shots taken offhand), call which of the 3-target cluster you've selected and take the shot. Striking the 9 inch at distance counts as 1 "stroke," the 12 inch adds a 1/2 stroke penalty, the 6 inch deducts 1/2 stroke from your score. Shots at the next plate cluster are taken from the first plate cluster, and so on. Shooters may select more distant plate clusters to reduce the number of "strokes" required by the course. The plates on the green include a bonus 3" plate; calling and striking it reduces your score by 1 stroke. Low strokes win. No carts, no caddies, everyone carries their own guns and ammo. Iron sights get a 1 stroke handicap per hole, handguns get 2. No ladies' tees.

If the land is paid for, it is by definition not "wasted". The owners get to decide what to do with their own land.

A huge part of the problem of World Hunger actually has to do with the problem of storing food. In some countries it is estimated that rats and other vermin might get as much as half of a given year's harvest. More plastic sheeting, and construction of silos might help this; let's ask the environmentalists is we can manufacture more systems to store food.

Higher crop prices are driven in the current era by the foolish idea of ethanol production. We are burning our food, rather than eating it, for the sake of a farm-belt scam meant to fleece taxpayers. There is no need to produce more ethanol; proven recoverable reserves of fossil fuels have approximately tripled in the last ten years, if I remember correctly. Again, this is something to be laid at the feet of the steenking Greengos.

A local B&B that catered to pheasant hunters used to have golf ball shoots if hunters got back before sundown (back when we had some pheasants in Iowa). Owner would hit golf balls, hunters would try to shoot them out of the air. Seems like every foursome should have one assigned shooter who tries to knock down the other foursome's shots.